


blame it on the night

by coffeeinallcaps



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Age Difference, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Harry Hart Lives, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, M/M, Night Terrors, Panic Attacks, Post-Canon Fix-It, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Withdrawal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-15
Updated: 2015-05-15
Packaged: 2018-03-30 17:34:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3945607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coffeeinallcaps/pseuds/coffeeinallcaps
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And then finally, to top it all off, he'd had the gall to go and die in Kentucky of all places.</p>
            </blockquote>





	blame it on the night

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Español available: [La culpa es de la noche.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4073863) by [qaroinlove](https://archiveofourown.org/users/qaroinlove/pseuds/qaroinlove)



> This was originally a series of progressively angsty, more or less purposefully clichéd, semi-not!ficcish [Tumblr drabbles](http://coffeeinallcaps.tumblr.com/post/118974694836/oh-god-you-should-do-some-more-of-that-breakdown).
> 
> The feelings of many anons were hurt in the process of writing this story.

 

**_0._ **

This is something that occurs to Eggsy years after the fact, when the dust has settled and all is well:

Sitting there in Harry’s red-walled office, watching that laptop screen, he didn’t just lose his newfound mentor, his maybe-might’ve-could’ve-been (although that thought hadn’t really solidified in his mind yet, was still billowing around in his subconscious, patiently biding its time). He also lost the one person who had managed to love him just right.

Daisy loved him plainly and innocently. His mum loved him the best she could—desperately but inadequately, too wracked with loss and guilt to give him what he needed when he needed it.

His father loved him only hypothetically, allegedly. “Your daddy loves you, Eggsy,” his mum would whisper to him, all those years ago, back before it turned into “Your daddy loved you, Eggsy,” and then into nothing at all, part of a bedtime ritual that had aged and cracked and faded away like the photographs of the man Eggsy cannot remember a single fucking thing about.

Harry had loved him differently. Calmly; matter-of-factly. The same way he’d done everything else. Compliments and criticism distributed carefully and evenly as though measured with a teaspoon beforehand. Harry had somehow believed in Eggsy almost from the moment they’d met, and that quiet sureness had been present in every move Harry had made around him, every word he’d spoken to him, every glance he’d spared him since. The way Harry had loved him had been intricate and graceful and utterly real.

Harry had loved him just right. 

 

* * *

 

 

_**I.** _

Harry isn’t dead.

Eggsy doesn’t know that; doesn’t find out until months later.

Doesn’t find out until he’s started smoking more, drinking more, eating less.

Doesn’t find out until he’s spent hours in the HQ fitness centre every day, pushing himself too hard and then pushing himself harder.

Doesn’t find out until he’s found himself staring blearily at a messy bump of coke on the back of a stranger’s hand and thinking _fuck it_ before he inhaled, felt the familiar burn, the familiar rush.

Doesn’t find out until he’s done all he can to forget. 

 

* * *

 

 

_**II.**_

The first time Harry sees Eggsy again, Eggsy refuses to even look at him.

“Eggsy,” Harry says, and Eggsy barks out a broken, hollow laugh and turns on his heels and storms out of Arthur’s—Harry’s office.

Merlin touches Harry’s shoulder and tells him to give Eggsy time, because that is what he and Roxy have been doing, giving Eggsy time. Partly because it’s what Eggsy needed, wanted, and partly because they had no idea what else to do.

And Harry does; he lets Eggsy walk away. Gives Eggsy time. Tells himself he lets Eggsy walk away because he’s giving him time, but really it’s because he can’t look at Eggsy and know he’s the reason for all of this. The reason why Eggsy’s a few pounds lighter, now wiry rather than built. The reason why Eggsy has this hard, determined look in his eyes and an unhealthy glow to his skin. The reason why Eggsy’s fingers won’t stop jittering unless they’re wrapped around the grip of a gun and the reason why Merlin hasn’t allowed Eggsy to hold a gun off training grounds in weeks.

And so that night Harry sits in his house, alone, curtains drawn, lights off, sipping his whiskey, slumping under the crushing weight of the knowledge that somewhere out there Eggsy is drinking himself into a stupor or snorting cocaine in the toilet of some skeevy night club, and it’s all Harry’s fault.

 

* * *

_**IIIa.** _

The inevitable breakdown comes a few weeks after Harry’s official appointment. They’re not sure whether it’s dehydration or exhaustion or a bad reaction to an impure pill that causes Eggsy to wind up in hospital. Whatever it is, it’s nothing an IV drip and some bed rest won’t fix. “He’ll be good as new in no time,” a cheerful nurse promises Harry, and Harry nods and pushes past him to where Eggsy is lying. Eggsy who is pale and thin and who has dark circles under his eyes that look like smudged bruises and who won’t be good as new for a very long time.

 _I did this_ , Harry thinks, and clenches his hands to fists by his sides.

Eggsy’s eyes are blinking open, and Harry’s about to say something (“hi”, “how are you feeling”, “you foolish, foolish boy”, “I’m sorry, Eggsy, I’m so sorry, please believe me when I say I never meant for any of this to happen”, anything) when Eggsy closes his eyes again and turns his head away.

It hits Harry like a punch in the gut, the realisation that Eggsy doesn’t want to see him. That he might in fact be the very last person Eggsy wants to see. It leaves him feeling breathless. It also leaves him feeling angry, overwhelmingly, irrationally angry. _I’m here now, aren’t I_ , he wants to yell,  _I’m here, I came back, can’t you just_ —

It makes him feel powerless, weak. Something he is not at all accustomed to feeling.

He sits down in the chair next to the bed, because damn him if he’s leaving. It’s not as though Eggsy could hate him any more than he already does, is it? So he stays, and he doesn’t say anything, and Eggsy doesn’t say anything either. Doesn’t move, doesn’t open his eyes, doesn’t turn his head back. He will have to start talking to Harry again at some point, though, so Harry grabs a magazine and stubbornly settles in for the long haul.

It’s only when he looks up again that he notices Eggsy is crying soundlessly, tears sliding down the side of his face and pooling in the curve of his ear. 

 

_**IIIb.** _

Eggsy can feel the hot tears drip down his cheeks, and he hates himself for crying but he can’t stop. Hates himself for that, too. Lies there crying and hating himself for crying. Lies there wanting Harry to go but also wanting him to stay, wanting Harry to touch him but also wanting Harry not to touch him. Wanting his body to stop feeling this way and wanting his mind to stop feeling this way and essentially wanting everything to stop feeling this way, wanting to stop feeling at all.

Harry doesn’t touch him but he also doesn’t leave. Eggsy can’t stop crying and he can’t stop feeling and everything is awful.

Roxy comes to shake her head at him and wipe his face dry with her sleeve and sit by his bedside and hold his hand. She doesn’t pay Harry much attention either, ’cause she’s a real bruv, but as the hours wear on Eggsy starts feeling awful about that, too—about Harry Hart sitting there all primly in his expensive suit with his trashy magazine, having mysteriously returned from the dead only to get ignored by everyone.

At one point, one of the nurses addresses Harry, assuming he is Eggsy’s father and trying to ‘discreetly’ press some drug info pamphlets into his hands. Eggsy’s body mercifully decides to start distracting him by kicking his fever up a notch and making his stomach violently empty itself every five minutes.

Merlin shows up too, and he does have plenty to discuss with Harry. Eggsy can barely hear them over the sound of his pulse roaring in his ears, but he doesn’t have the strength to care about what they say, what they decide, who takes him where. He doesn’t mind as long as he doesn’t have to face his mum like this, not again. Not ever again.

That is how he ends up curled into a shivering ball, sweating and freezing at the same time, in the guest room of the man whose death he’s been mourning for months.

 

* * *

_**IV.** _

He can’t sleep.

He’s buried under three duvets with all his joints aching and a headache so bad he can’t keep his eyes open and his jaw cramping from clenching it to keep his teeth from chattering, and despite how shattered he is, he can’t fucking sleep.

It’s all he can do to keep it together, and he can’t stand it, feeling this weak and vulnerable. Had promised himself he was through with feeling weak and vulnerable the day he’d got away from Dean, the day he’d found out about Kingsman—the day he’d met Harry. But now he feels raw, exposed, and he feels embarrassed and angry about feeling raw and exposed. Every time he hears the stairs or the floorboards creak he holds his breath, not sure what he wants more: Harry to come in or Harry to stay the fuck away.

It feels like he’s been lying there for hours, but it can’t have been much longer than thirty minutes when Harry brings in a sandwich, a cup of tea and a pint glass filled with a thick, rank-looking salmon-coloured liquid. “Doctor’s orders,” Harry says somewhat apologetically, and Eggsy tries to groan but barely manages a pathetic little noise.

Harry is kind enough not to comment on it. He sets down the tray. He looks weary, face pinched tight, and it reminds Eggsy of the last conversation they’d had before Harry left and didn’t come back. The last words Harry spat at him.

Security clearance levels, disaster protocols—he’s already heard all the explanations of why they couldn’t fill him in earlier. Heard ’em several times. Roxy’s told him, Merlin’s told him, Harry’s tried to tell him. The explanations make sense. Still don’t fill the hole those last words have worn into the centre of his chest over the past few months, though.

“Cheers,” he says hoarsely, and Harry nods, asks him if he needs anything else, leaves when Eggsy shakes his head. Eggsy eats half of the sandwich and downs most of the shake. It doesn’t taste quite as bad as it looks, but that ain’t saying much.

He can’t remember the last time he ate. He can’t recall it being this exhausting or taking this long, either. By the time he makes it to the now lukewarm tea he’s so knackered that he only manages a few sips before the cup slips from his shaking hands and its contents spill all over the mattress. _Great_ , Eggsy thinks, blinking dumbly at the stain, and then he puts the cup back on the nightstand and goes out like a light.

 

* * *

**_Va._** **_  
_ **

He feels slightly better when he wakes up. The headache is pulsating dully rather than sharply and his hands are trembling rather than shaking. The chills and hot flushes are less severe than before.

He’s hungry, but the tray with the other half of his sandwich is gone.

The journey downstairs is slow and torturous. When he gets there, he leans back against the wall, wrapped in his duvet, and stands there catching his breath for a while, the sweat cooling on his forehead. He has no idea what time it is, but it’s dark out and most of the lights are off. Harry isn’t home, it seems.

The sitting room is closer than the kitchen, and Eggsy stumbles over to the sofa to rest for a little while.

Merlin is standing in front of him, telling him Harry is gone, there was nothing they could do, he doesn’t say what happened but Harry’s body is mangled, covered in blood, his eyes open, empty, dead, he’s fucking dead again and Eggsy never got to forgive him, never got to tell him, never got to—

He wakes up neither screaming nor crying. He wakes up choking, his throat convulsing wildly around the air he can’t seem to suck down. There’s a warm arm wrapped around his chest, and he clutches onto it, drives his nails into the skin as he tries to breathe. Harry doesn’t respond, doesn’t jerk his arm away, stays right where he is—a solid line of warmth against Eggsy’s back. He’s saying something, quietly, but Eggsy can’t hear what because someone else’s words are drowning out the soft, soothing tones of Harry’s voice.

“You fucking died,” he’s gasping out, in-between ragged inhales, “you fucking died, you fucking died, you fuck—”

It’s fucking embarrassing, but it is what it is.

When he calms down enough to stop having to struggle for air, he realises the words Harry is whispering are  _I’m sorry_.

Even when Eggsy’s breathing steadies Harry doesn’t let go, doesn’t stop telling him he’s sorry. Eggsy’s face is burning with shame and his throat and lungs hurt and his headache has grown nauseatingly sharp again. Still he allows himself to sag back against Harry’s chest, allows his eyes to slip shut. Allows himself to enjoy the feeling of Harry’s fingers carding through his hair, the feeling of Harry’s body heat enveloping him. Allows himself to feel it all—weak, vulnerable, raw, exposed, embarrassed, angry, alive.

 

**_Vb_ _._ **

In his life, Harry has tortured people, maimed people, killed people. He slaughtered a church full of people just last year. Their blood-splattered faces haunt him; their dead bodies haunt him. Not all of them, not always, but often enough for him to feel apprehensive every time he turns off his nightlight.

These past few weeks, he hasn’t been waking up gasping in the middle of the night to the thought of those faces and bodies. These past few weeks it’s been the thought of what he has done to Eggsy. The thought of how he’d swept into Eggsy’s life and promised him a different one, a better one, lured him away from everything he’d ever known partly out of some selfish impulse. Got Eggsy to trust him, look up to him. Crushed his feelings in a moment of blind rage that, in hindsight, had been incited more by Chester King and Richmond Valentine than by Eggsy’s predictable failure to complete the final test.

And then finally, to top it all off, he’d had the gall to go and die in Kentucky of all places.

Coming back to London after all those months and seeing what it had done to Eggsy, what  _he_  had done to Eggsy… Merlin had warned him Eggsy wasn’t doing well, but Harry’d had no idea how bad it was.

But Eggsy  _is_  full of surprises, and Harry really shouldn’t be half as dumbfounded with relief as he is when Eggsy—sweet, tough, clever, hot-headed,  _loyal_  Eggsy, of whom no one could possibly have expected that he would shoot a dog just to get a fucking job—relaxes back into his arms and wordlessly begins to forgive him.

 

* * *

_**VI.**_

Withdrawal sucks.

(“How’d you do it when—” Roxy asks, and Eggsy says, “Joined the Marines,” and laughs himself into a coughing fit.)

The worst part is the part that comes after the physical part. It was easier not being able to breathe when he was congested and his throat hurt. Now there’s no identifiable reason why sometimes his lungs just cease to work, refuse to work, and that lack of a reason somehow makes it feel so much worse.

Harry goes back to work after two days, when Eggsy’s fever has broken. Eggsy spends the entire day on the sofa, paralysed with the realisation that he fucked up, he fucked up so bad, Kingsman is never going to take him back, he’s never going to be an agent again. He can’t remember how he came to this conclusion but he knows it made sense when he did.

By the time Harry gets home Eggsy is climbing the fucking walls. Harry talks to him but Eggsy doesn’t register what he’s saying. When Harry touches him it makes his skin crawl. Harry keeps talking, though, keeps touching, and first it makes him feel worse but then it makes him feel better.

 

* * *

 

_**VII.**_

He wakes up drenched in sweat, screaming—

No. He wakes up to the sound of screaming.

His feet carry him to Harry’s room, his arms wrapping themselves around Harry of their own accord. He clings on tight. After a moment’s hesitation, he cradles Harry’s head to his chest like he used to do with Daisy on fussy nights. It’s the right move; Harry stops thrashing, goes limp against him. He hasn’t woken up, but Eggsy can’t bring himself to let go, not yet, not when Harry is still breathing so erratically and his body is trembling against Eggsy’s.

He has almost nodded off when Harry inhales sharply and abruptly rips himself away from Eggsy’s touch, the mattress dipping as he bolts upright. Eggsy instinctively keeps his eyes closed, doesn’t move. He doesn’t realise he’s holding his breath until Harry lies back down and pulls the covers over them both, tucking them in around Eggsy’s shoulder.

 

He wakes up alone, surrounded by the smell of Harry. He’s hard, and he sleepily allows his hand to drift down, snaps it away when he realises where exactly he is.

Harry is downstairs, fumbling with his cuff links and staring into a sizzling frying pan. He says good morning back but he doesn’t meet Eggsy’s eye.

There are many things Eggsy wants to say to him, all of which boil down to _I can’t believe I had no idea you’re still suffering as well_. He finally settles on saying, “Feels much better knowing I ain’t the only fucked-up person under this roof,” around a mouthful of scrambled eggs.

Harry gives him that warm look he gets sometimes, usually when he thinks Eggsy isn’t watching, and smiles.

 

* * *

**_VIII._**

Sometime not long after Eggsy’s first mission under Harry-as-Arthur and not long before the first time they kiss, Eggsy ends the lease on his apartment and moves in with Harry.

It’s a rational decision. Neither of them are home often enough or for long enough periods of time to necessitate separate places, especially not when living together is working out so much better for both of them. Harry, once he gets over his initial embarrassment, admits to sleeping better knowing Eggsy is there to wake him up if needs be. Eggsy, in turn, takes better care of himself when there is someone around to remind him to.

Also, Eggsy sleeps better knowing that Harry is right across the hall from him, sleeping, breathing— _alive_. That’s something he doesn’t share with Harry until after that first kiss, though.

And sometimes when he can’t get his racing thoughts to slow down, despite how much fucking camomile tea he drinks or how long he makes his evening walk with JB or how hard he tries to focus on his breathing; when none of that works he goes to the master bedroom, and Harry never bats an eye when he finds Eggsy in his bed or when Eggsy silently slips under the covers next to him.

It’s just that they function better together, is all.

 

(“You know, technically you’re living with your boss,” Roxy says pensively, and Eggsy chokes on his tonic.)

 

* * *

_**IX.**_

Eggsy has thought of many different ways of how their first kiss could happen. He has thought of lazy morning kisses, of gentlemanly kisses after traditional dates. He’s thought of kisses in the rain under a Kingsman umbrella. He’s thought of kissing Harry in the heat of a battle, Harry tasting like salt and rust and euphoria.

The way it actually happens is in the middle of the night. He doesn’t know who wakes up who—doesn’t know whether it’s his own night sweats or Harry’s tossing and turning that has them both gasping awake and blindly reaching for each other. It’s familiar territory by now, one of Harry’s hands heavy on Eggsy’s shoulder, one of Eggsy’s hands finding its way to Harry’s wrist, feeling for the pulse point.

There’s nothing different about this specific situation, nothing different about this night. There’s nothing in particular that makes Eggsy decide to take the plunge. It just happens, his hand sliding into Harry’s sweat-damp hair, their mouths meeting, Harry’s tongue moving against his for the first time. It feels so natural that Eggsy doesn’t understand why his heart is beating as fast as it is when Harry pulls him closer.

They kiss until they’re both breathless, until Eggsy’s heartbeat has calmed down and his lips are tingling, until Harry starts making sleepy noises in the back of his throat and his grip on Eggsy starts to slacken.

“We shall have to talk this over in the morning,” Harry mumbles, raking his fingers through Eggsy’s hair, and Eggsy nods against Harry’s chest, resolves to shoot down any and all “I’m twice your age” and/or “I’m your boss” arguments with more kisses and, if that doesn’t work, blowjobs.

(Turns out that when Harry says “talk this over”, what he really means is “kiss and dry fuck until we’re both hard, get each other off in the shower, cook and enjoy a full breakfast and be so late for work that Merlin doesn’t even know what to say and just shakes his head dejectedly”.)

 

* * *

**_X._ **

When the dust has settled and all is well, Eggsy never wakes up drenched in sweat anymore. He never wakes up to Harry screaming anymore.

These are some of the things he does wake up to: Harry’s mouth on his skin; Harry’s warm, addictive touch; Harry’s smile.

**Author's Note:**

> GREAT, now my first official/AO3 contribution to this fandom has been the cliché-riddled angstfest. WITH CLOYING ENDING, AS PROMISED.
> 
> Please come hang out with me on [Tumblr](http://www.coffeeinallcaps.tumblr.com)!
> 
> P.S. I know there's no "0" in the Roman numeral system and it's TEARING ME UP INSIDE that I needed to use one anyway.


End file.
